From now to the end of Dad's journal, I'll only be posting the crew's missions. It is hard to believe that Dad, not even 20 years old, was a nose-gunner in a B-24.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I remember his stories of his experiences in WWII. At the time, I was bored hearing them. Now, I'd love to have him sit at the Thanksgiving table and tell the stories again. How his great-grandson would have enjoyed it.

And so - back to the journal.

"The next three missions were the gun batteries at Corregidor on 2/9, 2/12, and 2/14. After 47 years, I'm still not certain about the date of the re-invasion of Corregidor. In my diary this is what I wrote: 'When we got over the target, we had to circle because the Navy was shelling Corregidor.' When they were through, they backed off and we bombed. We moved out, but still circled, as Booker told us to watch the Paratroopers drop. I've read that the invasion was on 2/16/45, however, on 2/16/45, we did not fly, according to the microfilm reel A0592.

We closed February with a mission on 2/19 to Miri A/D, and Tawao on 2/25. Both missions were routine.

March started with a bang. On 3/2, we hit Sepinggan A/D again. Four fighters came up to greet us, and we had some inaccurate flak. This was without a doubt the easiest mission we had on Sepinggan, overall.

The mission of 3/5 was a short one of 5:25 to Licanan, where we hit the dispersal area with 260# Frags.

On 3/9, the target was the shore defenses at Zamboanga. On the bombing run, a B-24 from the 5th Group came in below and at right angles to our formation, and was hit with a bomb and crashed. No one knew where it came from. Fred saw this happen from the Tail Turret.

Our mission on 3/13 to Clinan Town was another short one, being only 4:25. We hit the personnel area with 260# Frags.

On 3/18, it was back to business as usual and wouldn't you know, we got Sepinggan again. We dropped seven 1,000# bombs on the A/D and man, they really threw the kitchen sink at us that day. There was Ack-Ack all over and we were really getting bounced around. This was the closest yet! We must have had an eleventh person aboard that day.

The mission to Liloan Town on 3/22 was downright boring. This was Booker's last mission with us, as he was appointed Assistant Operations Officer. Steve F. became our pilot.

On 3/26, we covered the invasion of Cebu City. This was one of the prettiest cities that we had flown over yet, very colorful.

3/28 found us over the A/D at Oelin, Borneo. This was our next to the longest mission at 12:50. It also was our first encounter with phosphorous bombs dropped from enemy fighters. Four fighters came in dead on the Nose, two went above the formation and two below, but before they did, they dropped their phosphorous bombs. The theory behind the bombs was, when the bombs exploded, they looked like a giant octopus, and at the end of each tentacle was a good sized hunk of phosphorous. When a plane would fly through this, the phosphorous could adhere to the plane's surface and burn a hole through the metal, starting a fire. Hopefully, it was supposed to stick to the wing, burn into the fuel tanks and ignite them, causing an explosion, and blowing the airplane out of the sky. Believe me, flying through these octopi, or octopusses, was no fun. I had my turret cranked as far right and left as I could go, trying to check the wing surfaces for pieces of burning phosphorous. Obviously, none stuck."